Original Face

Christ is risen!

Meshia iz ufgeshtanen.

Kristus er Opstanden.

Cristo ressuscitou.

Cristo è risuscitato.

Le Christ est ressuscité.

Christ daaztsáádéé' náádiidzáá.

Jesu jinde.

Xris-Tuu-Sax Agla-Gi-Kux.

Mesih dirildi.

Chúa ki-tô đã phục sinh.

Se levantó el Sinyor.

Si Kristo ay nabuhay.

Kristur er upprisinn.

Eysa tirildi.

Christ waniskow.

Kristus jevstal.

Christo ha resucitado.

Kristo levigîs.

Tha Criosd air èiridh.

Kristu amefufuka.

Mshiho qom.

Tsesa dolehisanahi.

Хрисмос Воскресе.

Yésu apumbo.

Krista dékina.

Atgyfododd Crist.

Christus ist auferstanden.

Kristu mubika.

Piztu da Kristo.

Tá Criost éirithe.

Eyesus ten-si-ou.

Christus resurrectus est.

Pikhistof aftonf.

םק תמאב ; םק ח׳שמה

Ua ala hou ʽo Kristo.

yinqa' HrIyStoS.

Χριστός Ανέστη!

Rose is a rose

    The hollers in West Virginia are up in arms because the new owners of a psychiatric hospital constructed, like most public mental health in patient facilities, in the early 1900s, are going back to calling it by its original name the "Lunatic Asylum."  Now aside from the fact that I can't see how this will be good for business, it seems to me that this is much ado about very little.  Yet, the political correctness police are everywhere, demanding that we alter our speech in order to protect feelings.
    The Massachusetts Board of Education has been spending its meeting time debating the changing of the names for schools that are not up to standard from under performing to, get this, "Commonwealth Priority Schools" and those schools that are really, really bad news, well they would become "Priority One Schools."
    Of course, the Board could have taken its time and effort and applied them to making these schools better, but that wouldn't stop people's feelings from being hurt.  Isn't that special.

Good Friday

For I the Lord have slain

In evil long I took delight,
Unawed by shame or fear,
Till a new object struck my sight,
And stopp'd my wild career:
I saw One hanging on a Tree
In agonies and blood,
Who fix'd His languid eyes on me.
As near His Cross I stood.

Sure never till my latest breath,
Can I forget that look:
It seem'd to charge me with His death,
Though not a word He spoke:
My conscience felt and own'd the guilt,
And plunged me in despair:
I saw my sins His Blood had spilt,
And help'd to nail Him there.

Alas! I knew not what I did!
But now my tears are vain:
Where shall my trembling soul be hid?
For I the Lord have slain!
A second look He gave, which said,
"I freely all forgive;
This blood is for thy ransom paid;
I die that thou may'st live."

Thus, while His death my sin displays
In all its blackest hue,
Such is the mystery of grace,
It seals my pardon too.
With pleasing grief, and mournful joy,
My spirit now if fill'd,
That I should such a life destroy,
Yet live by Him I kill'd!

--John Newton (1725-1807)

With thanks to Canon Kendall Harmon for noting this poem today.

The subprime mess

    Finally an article that explains how something seemingly as isolated as subprime mortgages could make the entire financial structure shudder. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/business/19leonhardt.html?em&ex=1
206072000&en=ab4caf3befa3e1c9&ei=5087%0A

What is the take away message?  Our economy, like any economy, like all economics, is based upon the belief that everyone will stand behind their promises or commitments, come what may and that there will be someone/thing that will guarantee the whole mess won't topple over.  In the end economics is a theology in some sense...it is the holding--without proof-- that all will be right, that people have good will and will also believe and act in that belief in the economic enterprise.  If that confidence is rattled, the whole thing goes to shit, very very quickly.  Right now there are a whole lot of economic agnostics out there and that is not a good thing. Not good at all.

Proof I am not a geek

    Arthur C. Clarke died today.  I feel nothing special.  I never got the point of science fiction.  It bored me.  Maybe I am or have been imaginationally impaired but I never enjoyed sci fi.  Or Star Wars. Or Star Trek  (Q: What is the difference between a Star Trek and a MENSA convention?  A: The ears.)  I guess that means I am not nor have I ever been a geek or a nerd.  The wonders of hours of D&D role playing, discussions about the meanings of Doug Adams' books and the owning of dozens of imprinted tee-shirts (other than with sports or college logos) are lost on me.
    Oh well. I've still had a pretty full life.  Even without a pocket protector.

David Mamet's conversion

    Name dropping high alert!!!!--I like David Mamet.  Not just his writing, which is singularly brilliant, but as a person.  I have known him for a number of years and the one characteristic of his that anyone who knows him would say is that Mamet is honest.  Deeply and profoundly honest.  It is why his plays, films and fiction have an authenticity that compels--and repulses.  Mamet follows his understanding of the truth wherever it takes him, without concern for the the price he will have to pay for stating that truth. 
    With the piece has has written to the Village Voice today, (http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0811,374064,374064,1.html/full)
there will certainly be a price to be paid in the world in which he resides.  Like Ron Silver before him, Mamet will soon learn what the cost for his apostasy from the left-liberal orthodoxy that is the entertainment field as well as reform/conservative Judaism will be. To accept the notion of capitalism and limited government--what Burke would state as classic conservatism--is to be a pariah in his professional, social and cultural circles. 
    But that will not deter Mamet.  He has not only come to understand a truth about how the world works,  in typical Mamet form, he has also publicly articulated that understanding.  And the consequences be damned.  That defines courage in my opinion. 

Schadenfreude Rally

    So it took a bit longer than I expected yesterday, but no one can tell me that today's rally in the stock market wasn't influenced with the fall from grace and power of Elliot "Ness" Spitzer.  The more than 400 point gain in the Dow Jones Industrial Average is the largest in nearly six years.  Sure, the Fed said that there was $200 billion in extra credit for financial institutions and that it would extend which securities, including mortgage backed notes, it would accept as collateral for this money; that is all well and good.  However, traders came to their trading desks with a spring in their steps and whistling happy tunes this morning.  The bears, who have killed all recent rallies and have driven the Dow down 900 points in just a few days, were no where to be seen.
    Why?  'Cause, like in Munchkin-land, all is Technicolor and sweet songs.  Sing it out: Ding-dong, the sanctimonious, narcissistic, petty tyrant and prosecutorial bully Spitzer is dead!

Crash and burn

    I am surprised that there wasn't a humongous rally this afternoon on the New York Stock Exchange.  Eliot Spitzer, the super sanctimonious former prosecutor and soon to be former governor of New York has died, politically that is.  And that he was destroyed in a criminal prosecution must have delighted Wall Street. 
    During the early part of the decade Spitzer was the most powerful person in the stock market because of his desire to make his name on the backs of brokers and investment advisers.  He twisted and manipulated professionals and firms who buckled under his office's extortion rather than to fight for their names in the public.  Like the bully he is, well--was, he relied upon the fear on the part of his victims to kowtow to him.
    Spitzer was convinced, and lots of others in the Democratic Party agreed, that he was the re-incarnation of Teddy Roosevelt.  He would ride his prosecutorial zeal to the NY governorship and then...the White House.
    His inaugural address was a study in hubris criticizing all other governors before him as moral, intellectual and political pygmies. He continued in the same vein while in office crushing any chance of accomplishing his policy agenda.  His enemies on both sides of the political aisle created an unanimity which has been without precedent in Albany.  Hatred of Spitzer became more important than partisanship in the state legislature.
    Now he is political dead meat.  Even if the market didn't rally, you can be sure that the whiskey and cigars have been broken out tonight at the traders' favorite watering hole--Harry's at Hanover Square.

Fly on the wall

    If you were glued to your television sets watching the primary coverage, you missed the best show on tonight.  Fox had a live web-tv experience of Democratic and Republican analysts just speaking among themselves real time.  People coming and going with small talk, technical tv stuff, seeing the pros react to the candidate's speeches and the campaigns' flacks spin as well as hearing their inside jokes.  It has been fascinating, and as someone who has spent many a election night in those rooms, it was as candid a way to experience political pros talk that I have ever seen.  It has been wonderful for those of us political junkies out here in the cyberworld.
    Thanks, Fox.  Do it every election night.  I'll be glued to my computer monitor from now on--not the tv.

Wooo hooo

    Wow, just when things looked settled, the voters say, "hold on, we don't want this nomination battle to be over." Clinton's must have victory in Ohio and Rhode Island, coupled with a nail biter in Texas (still too close at the time of this writing) has overturned the death watch that the press and the Democratic elite had posted on the Clinton campaign.  In fact, national polls out today show Clinton in the lead.  If Clinton does go on to squeak out a victory in Texas she will have won California, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Texas, Florida, and Michigan.  The only big state that Obama will have won is Illinois, his home state.  If she wins Pennsylvania, as the polls and the soundings around that Commonwealth suggest, she will have beaten him in the battleground states that any Democrat has to win to capture the White House.
    So where does that leave us?  The "super delegates" about which much has been written in the past week will continue to grow in importance.  There will be no quick end to this fight and it may be that it comes all the way to the convention floor. Watch for lawsuits to re-instate the full compliment of delegates for Michigan and Florida regardless that those states ignored the national party's demand that they not hold their primaries as early as they did.
    It could be that the nomination will once again come down to the smoke filled room--well, sans the smoke.  Or even the Supreme Court.  What irony.